


Just Be

by yeahitshowed



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 12:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4746989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeahitshowed/pseuds/yeahitshowed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t do the avoidance thing,” LaFontaine says, getting too close to you. “Just talk to me for a second. I want to be more than friends. What do you want to be?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Be

**Author's Note:**

> Diverges from canon after 2x24, "Hunger Games."

“Hey, Perr.”

You nearly drop your Lysol. It’s late--too late for polite company to be dropping by your room unannounced, but LaFontaine has never held much love for social conventions. She--they--lean against your doorframe, idly passing a blood pack between their hands like a baseball.  

“Hello.” You resume your nightly disinfecting, spraying down your desk. “Shouldn’t you be feeding your little franken-flash-drive? I don’t want to think about what would happen if he got too hungry.”

“JP can wait,” LaFontaine says. “I’m sure he’s busy figuring out the wonders of the twenty-first century.”

“Like wearing clothes.” 

LaFontaine snorts. “Hey, you’d be a little disoriented too if you suddenly woke up in a vampire’s body.”

“Yes. Well. Luckily, I never have.”

They don’t respond. You hate the silence more than you hate vampires, and mold, and stupid British flashdrives. There never used to be silences between you two. 

You glance up from your cleaning to find LaFontaine staring at you with an odd intensity. “What?” you ask.

“Nothing. You’re pretty.” 

\-----------------------------------------

_You’re seven and you wish Susan were a princess. Disney movies have quickly taken over your life, the pretty girls drawn with neat, clear lines dancing across your TV every day after school. Cinderella is by far your favorite, the VHS tape worn thin by endless viewings. At recess, you kneel on the asphalt, pretending to scrub the ground while humming “Sing Sweet Nightingale.” Susan sits by your side, watching an inchworm traverse a fallen leaf. After a few minutes’ silent observation, she extends a hand, letting the inchworm crawl on a finger._

_“Don’t touch that!” you screech. Susan freezes, eyes wide._

_“Why not?”_

_“Because! Those things have germs!”_

_Susan laughs. “We have germs too, silly. Some germs are even good for you.”_

_“Put it down,” you command, lower lip starting to tremble. “Put it down or I’ll scream.” Your mom warned you about all sorts of diseases that come from dirt, and what if Susan caught one, and had to stay in bed forever?_

_She lowers the worm back down, frowning. “Okay, okay. You don’t have to be afraid of a little bug, Lola.”_

_You eye the inchworm carefully. “I’m not afraid. D’you want to play princess with me?”_

_“Don’t know how,” she shrugs._

_“It’s easy! Who’s your favorite princess? I like Cinderella, but Snow White is good, too.”_

_“The mice,” she says with a grin. “Cinderella’s mice. Can I be the mice?”_

_“No.” You brush the dust from your dress._

_“Aw, why?”_

_“Because you need to pick a princess. That’s how it works.”_

_“I don’t want to be a princess.”_

_“Then you can’t play with me,” you huff._

_That’s the end of that. She sits quietly while you hum._

\-----------------------------------------

“Oh. Thank you,” you say, brow furrowing. Another silence. For what feels like an eternity, you polish the wood, eyes decidedly downcast. Words rise and stick in your throat. 

“Did I just make things weird?” LaFontaine asks, crossing the room with their hands in their pockets. “I didn’t mean to. Honest.”

“No, it’s just...why did you...” 

“Listen.” They’re right next to you, now. “This feels like the end of days, right? The whole campus is becoming war of the worlds, and I’m getting scared about how it’s all gonna turn out. Desperate times call for way-overdue measures.”

“I don’t think I follow,” you say, throat dry. 

“Before the anglerfish hits the fan, I wanted to be up front about...things. Which I’m clearly not being right now.” They take a deep breath. “I think about how pretty you are more than a friend probably should.”

It’s like that dream you used to have almost nightly, back before your dreams were all shadowy monsters and whispering prophecies. The dream where Silas is nothing but a nightmare, and LaFontaine hates creepy science but loves, loves, loves you. Swallowing hard, you open your mouth to speak; your phone starts buzzing on your bed.

LaFontaine reaches the bed before you do, pushing the phone out of your grasp. “I should really get that,” you say. 

“Oh, come on.”

You cross your arms. “It could be important! Someone could be in danger. Or--or out of snacks.”

“Don’t do the avoidance thing,” LaFontaine says, getting too close to you. “Just talk to me for a second. I want to be more than friends. What do you want to be?” 

\-----------------------------------------

_You’re twelve and you wish Susan were a boy. Girls are supposed to like boys, but you...you like Susan. You like Susan a lot._

_You think Susan wishes she were a boy, too. The word “girl” makes her scrunch up her nose like she smelled something rotten. So does her name, for that matter. Sometimes, she doesn’t even respond when teachers take attendance, and you have to answer for her._

_Halfway through the school year, the two of you are invited to a birthday party. Not just any birthday party--a boys-and-girls party. After cake and presents, the host beckons her guests to the basement. “Close the door,” she hisses, placing an empty coke bottle in the middle of the floor. “Okay, who wants to spin first?”_

_As you watch couple after couple peck each other on the lips, you curse yourself for forgetting the pocket mouthwash your mother gave you. Maybe there’s still time to run home and grab it. Your house isn’t far from here--four blocks, tops. You could run there right now. And if you took too long and missed the rest of the game, well, that wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it?_

_It’s too late: the bottle is shoved into your sweaty hands, and, heart beating out of your chest, you give it a twirl. Around and around it goes, finally landing on--_

_Susan._

_She looks at you, startled. There’s a couple nervous titters around the circle--people talking about you--people talking about the two of you, which just will not do._

_“I’ll go again,” you say, reaching for the bottle._

_“I think that’s against the rules,” Susan offers, because of course she only cares about rules the one time that you don’t._

_“I’m sure there’s an exception for things like this.”_

_“Things like what?”_

_“Two girls,” you say through gritted teeth, painfully aware of the number of people looking at you._

_“I don’t get it,” she says. “It’s just a kiss.”_

_But it’s not. It’s your first kiss, the landmark event that you’ll have to carry with you for the rest of your life. And it’s supposed to be with a boy._

_Avoiding Susan’s eyes, you re-spin the bottle._

\-----------------------------------------

“I...” Your face is burning, and LaFontaine’s cool hand brushing one of your curls back into place barely helps. If they weren’t so close, you would form a sentence like a normal human being-- “Yes, of course I want to be more than friends, weirdo,” or something more romantic--but they’re an inch from your face and your brain is frazzled, so you kiss them, lunging forward in one awkward, overly enthusiastic movement. Your phone is still buzzing incessantly, and you don’t care; for the first time in god knows when, you don’t care about much of anything. Let the craziness keep washing over your life, if it must. If kissing LaFontaine is your new normal, you can withstand all the craziness Silas has to offer.

Except LaFontaine pulls back too soon, and oh, goodness, that’s a strange expression. It’s like the warmth in their face was burned off with acid--their smile is cold, and doesn’t reach their eyes. “I’m sorry about this, Perr,” they say.

“Sorry about--?”

They sink their teeth into your throat. 

\-----------------------------------------

_You’re sixteen and you wish Susan were a jerk. Mean, selfish, anything to make it easier for you to clean out the thoughts you’ve been having about someone you very much should not want. But no, she’s wonderful, and it’s getting increasingly more difficult to convince yourself that you’re straight._

_Luckily, your own confusing sexuality doesn’t matter at the moment, because Susan has a girlfriend. You’re happy for her. The girl seems nice enough, even if her fashion sense is a bit much. The short hair, the neckties, the suspenders--honestly, you’d be doing her a disservice if you didn’t say something. Which is why you can’t understand when Susan pulls you aside one day to ask why you’re being so rude._

_“I’m just trying to give her a little advice!” you explain. “The way she dresses can be a bit...eye-catching, you know. People stare.”_

_“She likes her clothes,” Susan says. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”_

_“Yes, it does. Don’t be silly.”_

_“No, it doesn’t!” Her voice is louder than you think you’ve ever heard it. “She likes ties and stuff! What’s the big deal?”_

_“Fine! If you’re okay with her looking like a freak, then whatever!” you snap._

_You’ve only seen Susan cry a handful of times--once because of a scraped knee, twice because of homemade experiments gone awry--but never in your life has she cried because of you. Watching the tears spill down her face, you think to yourself, well, at least one of us is a jerk._

\-----------------------------------------

Blood drips onto the carpet. You can see it out of the corner of your eye. If you don’t act fast, there’ll be a nasty stain. A bit of water and ammonia would do the trick; there may still be a bottle in your cabinet. If not ammonia, you definitely have some detergent. In any case, none of this can possibly be real, so there’s no need to worry. 

It can’t be real, right? LaFontaine with fangs? LaFontaine hurting you? It goes against the rules of nature. On a more basic level, it simply makes no sense. Carmilla wouldn’t have turned them--you’re fairly certain of that. That just leaves...

“I’d say this matches your little trick with the holy water, don’t you?”

Through dimming vision, you see Mattie strolling into your room, grinning a predator’s grin. She runs a hand through LaFontaine’s hair like a proud mother. “I was afraid your friends might ruin the surprise,” she purrs. “Although--” she plucks up your still-vibrating phone from your bed-- “It looks like they tried. How rude of them.” 

You can see, illuminated on the screen, the texts you missed from Laura: 

_call me ASAP_

_Perry are you there?_

_JP turned LaF i’m so sorry i’m so sorry_

_we were trying to starve out the vamps and he lost it_

_Mattie took LaF i don’t know what she’s planning_

“Better luck in the next life, sweetheart,” Mattie says, turning on her heel without a second glance. “Know your place next time.” 

As the world narrows to the pain in your neck, two thoughts pulse in your fogging brain: you’re dying and you wish LaFontaine were LaFontaine. 

 


End file.
